Oregon Greens urged to run in more local elections

Presenter: ‘Think globally and run locally.’ That was the message from longtime Green Party organizer Mike Feinstein to Oregon’s Pacific Green Party at its summer convention last month. With the introduction, Josiah Dean:

Josiah Dean (Pacific Green Party): Mike Feinstein, former mayor and city council member in Santa Monica; co-founder of the Green Party of California; California secretary of state candidate for this year as well as in 2018; and he does our elections database for the Green Party of the United States.

Mike Feinstein (Green Party): Thank you. I’ve been involved since October 1988, so I’ve seen a long expanse with our history, both in the United States and internationally, as I’ve been probably the person who’s probably had the most exposure to Green parties in other countries as well.

And what I can say from all of that is that the Green Party political movement is a global response to the unsustainability of our lifestyle as a species, taking the green movement issues and values and to try and bring those into the electoral arena—based in social movements and responding to the inadequacy of traditional political parties that have a worldview built more on unlimited consumption of finite resources, and how that leads to concentration of wealth and power.

And we’re often alternative, not only from a development and economic standpoint, but to the xenophobic and racist scapegoating that often goes when there are failing economic systems.

So we have this interesting place and people talk about the Green Party as an expression of that adage about ‘Think globally and act locally.’ And what I want to focus on is that portion where we ‘Think globally and run locally’—running for local political office.

The Green Party is a think-globally and run-locally political movement. My experience in Santa Monica being elected twice to the City Council is really a textbook example of how successful Green campaigns can work.

We try and run based in community activism, in social movements, flowing out of those movements, representing those movements, and having the credibility in your community first, having served in some form, whether you’re on your neighborhood organization board or some nonprofit in your community, maybe you got appointed to an advisory board or commission in town—all those different types of backgrounds.

And in my case, in the Ocean Park neighborhood of Santa Monica, we had what was called a ‘Main Street Advisory Committee’ of merchants, property owners and residents. And we were tasked by the City Council to do an update on the permitted uses on Main Street. 

And what ended up coming out of that coalition of very different interests was an agreement to change us from four lanes to—which was a lot of pass-through fast traffic on this neighborhood commercial street—to two lanes, two bike lanes, integrated public transit.

And what that showed me was that getting involved in local government can bring about a green policy agenda, and that gave me some faith and long term belief that being in the system can achieve. 

Obviously it has to be an inside-outside strategy, but you can achieve good things by being in the system. So that convinced me to be active.

And then a couple of years later, the Rand Corporation—which some of you may have known about from post-WWII think tank that often did a lot of military planning for the United States—they had a headquarters in Santa Monica and had the rights to do a big development. Our City Council had approved a big development right across from City Hall that was going to bring in a commercial office park, and the Rand headquarters, up to 84 feet high, a block from the beach.

There was a resident referendum against the City Council decision to do that. And I was the public face of that referendum and that fight against that development. And while we lost that ballot measure, that referendum, we were outspent $250,000 to $5,000 by Rand—the next electoral cycle, I ran for City Council, 13 candidates for four seats, I finished second overall as a first-time candidate. 

(I had, of three incumbents, I was first on Election Day. It was the absentee votes earlier, more conservative.)

So that happened because I had been based in this community activism around that issue and had the credibility and the alliances that swept me into office. And people saw me as an expression of that local movement.

And then a couple years later, when the Rand Corporation was not able to utilize their development rights, they couldn’t really get somebody who would take those development rights and build what they wanted. They came back to the city and I engineered a deal where we bought 11.4 acres for $53 million of their land.

And today, instead of an 84-foot-high Rand Corporation building both literally and symbolically standing over City Hall, we have what’s called Tongva Park, named after the Indigenous people of our region and this beautiful multifaceted park that has a variety of different areas for different parts of the community.

And then the Rand headquarters was on the rest of their land, but not right out in front of City Hall. And we got it lower and a more equal building. And I actually negotiated with the Rand president, where they wanted to build walls around their headquarters in this otherwise civic center public area, because they didn’t want the great unwashed coming by their national security state offices.

But I ended up negotiating with Michael Rich (who actually was an advisor in the Bush administration) to have that as open space. It all worked out.

So I bring all that up in that coming out of community activism is critical to being successfully elected. And you’ve got, I forgot how much, somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 (Green Party) members in your state. How many of them are on advisory boards and commissions?

Are you actually taking your voter registration list and going county by county and city by city, and seeing who is actually holding some sort of advisory position in town? Because those are people who you can develop into good candidates down the line.

And unlike states where there isn’t registration by party, you have this pre-selected list of people that you can recruit from. And then when you start getting people elected for people who you think should be Greens, but often say, ‘Well, I can’t run as a Green, I’ll never get elected even though it’s nonpartisan.’ 

The more that you get people elected, the more the possibility of running as a Green and being consistent in your policy and values is something that you can pitch to people who you want to recruit.

The other thing I’ll mention from my time in office is that when I got in as a Green, there were a lot of people who were like, ‘Oh, this guy is just going to be an ideologue. And he’s just going to be talking about these big, airy fairy ideas. But can he govern?’

And just like other traditionally oppressed communities, whether it’s women in government or folks of color in government, you often have to do more and be more prepared, because of what people expect out of you and whether they’ll cut you some slack.

So I made sure that I knew my material of every agenda packet better, as equal or better than any of my colleagues. When I showed up at the meetings on Tuesday night, I had talked to staff in advance if I had amendments that I might make to the staff recommendation. 

I had checked them out with the staff and the city manager to see what would play or not. And of course, when the agenda comes out, you’re touching base with all of the stakeholders in the community. So I was very, very prepared when I got there.

And we choose the mayor from within the city council. And when I was reelected to my second four-year term, I was a unanimous choice as mayor of the city. 

And at that time, it was the largest city in the United States that we (the Green Party) had a mayor. And one of the most significant, because our daytime population goes up from 93,000 to a quarter million, up to a half million on weekends.

We have a massive budget right now. I think it’s $800 million, because Santa Monica is a regional center. We have an airport, two hospitals, a college, blah, blah, blah.

Okay, so now I want to talk a little bit about the broader dynamic we have in terms of running for public office as Greens. 

Okay, this is a breakdown of the number of races all time for Greens in the United States per type of office: 7,362 Greens who have run already or are currently on the ballot. (That number will go up when your state party finalizes your list and the people are on the ballot.) 

But as of today, over 7,300 Greens. And I’ve broken down where for state and federal partisan office, 2,822 or 38% of our races have been for these higher level offices, whether that’s for Congress or governor or state legislature, statewide board of education, those sort of things.

Then below are the municipal races. About 62% of our total races have been locally. So when people come and say, ‘Oh, all you do is run for president and there’s Jill Stein, doesn’t do anything,’ we have this bottom-up strategy, and we have elected right now at least 1,699 Greens (or won 1,699 times). Five of them were for state legislature, and the other ones have been for lower-level offices.

And we in our city council races were elected about 25% to 30% of the time; for school board about 50% of the time; and then for special districts like park board, water board, library boards, etc., our winning percentage is even higher. And our percentage of Greens who are incumbents who get reelected is also higher.

And what I want to touch upon here, building upon why we’re running locally and why it’s so important: A bottom-up electoral strategy is sustainable and it builds a base, and we’re not just dependent on a big name or celebrity.

Remember the Reform Party? Or maybe you don’t even remember them anymore. They’re gone. But you know, Ross Perot, he was there. They all followed him, but they didn’t run for local office and they don’t exist.

And there have been many parties since the 1980s on the left of center: The Citizens Party. In the ‘80s, the attempt at a Labor Party. The New Party, which now has morphed into the Working Families Party but isn’t an independent party.

The 21st Century Party was going to be started by the National Organization for Women.  The People’s Party—that flamed out a couple of years ago. Do you remember Dr. Cornel West went on their ballot for a couple of weeks and then left when he found out some problems with their organizer. So those parties are all gone.

But our strategy of running so many people locally is sustainable and it keeps us going. And it’s easier for us to get elected on municipal levels than for state and federal for so many different reasons.

But one of them is that the role of big money—the districts are smaller, and the role of big money is smaller. Because if you have a reputation in your community, it isn’t just dependent upon money. Who can afford mailers and TV ads the way it is in state and federal offices? So we have a good chance of getting folks elected locally.

And I mentioned here, Green incumbents have been reelected 70%-80%;  in some of the races it’s 80% to 90%. But what that’s showing is that not only do voters think we have good ideas when we give them the chance to vote for us in our communities, but that we can govern people, send us back to elected office in most cases, because we’ve shown we’re in office, we’re fine, that we’re good, that we can do it. And we’ve actually had green City Council majorities.

What does this also do for us? The Green parties that are most successful around the world are in countries with proportional representation. And some of the people who are part of the duopoly here, who don’t want us to have proportional representation because they want to hold on to their duopoly political power will say, ‘Oh, you guys just want to change the electoral system because you can’t win in this current system. So you’re just a bunch of losers.’

And even though we have good answers to that, you know, that that appeals. It’s an emotional appeal to, to diss us that they’ll throw at us and see if it’ll stick.

Well, when we have people elected to local office, that is a strong rationale to argue for these higher electoral reforms, because we point to how you can get elected in your community. It’s not the same as the higher level.

Voters have clearly shown that they like us, they want us, they return us to office. But the system itself makes it hard for voters who want to elect us to do so on these higher levels. So we aren’t losers. We have this base and that shows that it’s the system that’s the problem, not the Greens.

The second thing is you’re in a state, Oregon, where people are going to say, ‘Well, you’re getting these folks elected, but it’s not in the ballot. It doesn’t say Green Party. So it doesn’t mean anything,’ because, of course, they want to move the goalposts on us every time. First, we only run for president, then it’s only Jill Stein, then, blah, blah, blah.

So the significance in a state like Oregon, or where I live in California, or the 27 in total (I think it’s 27 states) in which you can register by political party, is that people who are significantly based and talented in their community enough to be able to run for and get elected to political office are choosing to be independent of the duopoly and choosing to affiliate by their legal voter registration in the Green Party.

So they are making a statement by saying, ‘There’s a political party that even though I’m going to lose some political power by not being part of the one of the two big major parties, I relate to that party platform and its values and the way it does its its operations, and want the public to know that in the way I govern.’

So we’ve got these people who are choosing us because there are consequences and they still do it. And that’s a very strong statement to be able to say to the public that these quality folks in the electoral arena are choosing to be Greens.

So, yes, we may not win the election with a partisan ballot line. There’s only a small number of states in which municipal elections are partisan (in particular, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania). But it’s still very significant for us.

And then what do we learn from the Green Party of England and Wales, who right now is pulling off a revolution and replacing the Labour Party in local elections all over the country? Their commitment to running in local offices, for their city councils over decades has led them to start winning seats in the House of Commons.

They are running for higher-level offices in areas where they have either been a substantial council minority, or in some cases, have been a council majority.

So it’s fine that we run for higher-level offices because there are specific advantages to be able to (1) show people what our stances are on issues of state politics and federal politics, and then (2) that our ballot status often depends upon running for these higher levels. 

But best to try and do overlapping where we have city council races in the same districts where we’re running for higher level offices and develop those local candidates to run for those higher level offices afterwards.   

Justin Filip (Pacific Green Party, candidate for Oregon CD4): Looks like Jeremy’s got a question.

Jeremy Beausoleil Smith (Pacific Green Party, candidate for Portland City Council): Thank you so much, Mike. That was awesome.  

 I’m Jeremy, I’m running for Portland City Council right now in District 4. So that is speaking to me a lot. And, if you had any advice for someone running for a nonpartisan position at the municipal level, I don’t know, What do you wish you had told yourself the first time that you ran?

Mike Feinstein (Green Party): Jeremy, is your election in November?

Jeremy Beausoleil Smith (Pacific Green Party, candidate for Portland City Council): It’s Nov. 3. Yes, it’s this year, just a couple months from now.

Mike Feinstein (Green Party): Let’s have a one-on-one. But I do want to mention that the Portland model is something that the Green Party of Los Angeles County, where I live, is promoting.

The city of L.A., you may recall a couple years ago, three council members were caught on a tape recording of highly racist comments of three of the Latino Council members about redistricting in order to take political power away from the Black council members and the Black community in LA. It was very ugly, very classist, even within the Latino community.

And the response by the city of L.A. was to look at charter reform. But they’ve been dragging their feet, and the Green Party has been promoting trying to go to like Portland three-seat city council districts elected by ranked choice voting.

And the thing that’s so interesting, of course, with the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act and making it harder to do a single-seat majority-minority districts, is that in L.A., we have three major traditionally disenfranchised ethnic racial groups: the Latino, Black, and Asian American / Pacific Islander.

And even if you draw a single seat district to try and aid representation and voter choice for one of those communities, it’s often at the expense of the other communities.

But if you go to three-seat city council districts with ranked choice voting, then we can have representation from different parts of each of those districts, which may be very, very, very different.

So it’s something that we’re continuing to push and we’ll see where that’s going. But I wanted to let you all know that your example in Portland is a big inspiration for us in L.A.

Jeremy Beausoleil Smith (Pacific Green Party, candidate for Portland City Council): Absolutely. Thank you.

Mike Feinstein (Green Party): There’s a program that I’ve been hoping that your state party would adopt. And it’s somebody who has to enjoy minutia research. And I think the folks that I’ve asked to do it in the past have been too busy to do this.

But about half of the Greens that we know who are elected across the country come from this following process: We literally take the voter registration list in one hand of the Greens, the Green voter registration list, and compare it side by side with the list of local government candidates that are put out by county governments or city governments, etc. and literally go name by name and compare them to the voter registration lists.

That’s how we are finding most–I mean, a good half of all the Greens who are holding elected office in the state. I have been doing that for your state the last three or four cycles, and I’ve been doing it for Maine as well as my state of California.

And all the time that I spend doing that takes me away from the interesting reports and analysis that I also should be doing as the election database manager, where I can give everybody more political intel on our trends.

So ideally, you would pick a team of maybe three or four people who would divide the counties in the state geographically to where you live, and somebody has the Green registration list, and you go through the list of candidates that are finalized and compared to the registered Green list, and you’ll find these folks that way.

And they’ll probably, I mean, some of the people in your state, I’ve discovered as well a few years ago. So I just want to pitch that. I’ll train you guys in, but it would be ideal if you can find a couple people who are willing to take that on over. Thank you.

Josiah Dean (Pacific Green Party): Logan’s got his hand up. Go ahead. Logan.

Logan K: Hi, Mike. Good to meet you. I have a couple of questions. Actually, I followed the Butch Ware campaign very extensively and was very, very supportive of him running explicitly for that position because I thought that it was very tactical and very strategic. And there was a real plan laid out behind what he said that he was going to do when he got into office.

And I’m very skeptical of most national level election runs, you know, at this point, but the the way that he went about it, it made sense to me. And what I saw that happened along the way with the endorsement processes was frustrating.

But I am curious whether you guys have any sort of information in your vote totals at this point over about how many votes he actually got. Because when I look online, it’s absolutely impossible to tell.

And my other question is: What are you doing with the California Greens specifically in Los Angeles? Like, what do you all do to get out into the community? What kind of events do you go to? What kind of events do you host? How do you reach out to the community and build the party?

Mike Feinstein (Green Party): All right. So the first question again was, oh, his vote total. So when you go to GPElections.org, that’s the homepage for the database. When you scroll down you’ll see ‘California Election Report.’

So there’s a link to our final numbers there that I did a California specific one from the primary because we have the ugly jungle primary. And Butch got about 22,500 write-in votes.

How do we compare that? The largest total ever for write-in votes of Greens was about 45,000 for Butch and Jill Stein as president in New York state in November of 2024. And this is about half of that. 

More registered Greens in California, less in New York, but in New York, that election was not close. The Democrats won the presidency. The Harris campaign was, I don’t know, 15 points ahead of of Trump or something like that. So it was very easy for people, very easy for people to write in Stein and where in New York state. 

In California, you may have followed that, we had the situation where there were 10 strong Democrats in our ‘jungle’ primary and two Republicans, and the bottom line is the race was very close in our jungle primary for the Democrats. So there was not a lot of incentive. So I thought Butch’s number was pretty strong given that.

The rest of it, how we build locally, we’ll have to save for another time because we’re out of time. I’ll give you my email if you want to write to me and we can set up a phone call.

Logan K: Yeah, that sounds good.

Josiah Dean (Pacific Green Party): So thank you. Thanks again Mike. It was wonderful hearing you and very inspirational to those of us that are now working to get elected to various positions.  

Mike Feinstein (Green Party): Thank you. I appreciate your time. Best of luck.

Presenter: Long-time Green Party organizer Mike Feinstein says L.A. is interested in the Portland City Council model, as a way to enable more communities to be represented without pitting them against one another.